ACCRA Unveils TZ5/TZ6 Shafts

Rick Young

Rick Young

I was pleased to be on hand for the 15th anniversary of ACCRA Golf Day last month.

A traditional Monday precursor to the PGA Merchandise Show, the Kingston, Ont., premium-level shaft company, along with True Temper and Miura Golf, once again, executed another fun and informative gathering of media and professional club fitters from Canada, the United States and overseas. The collective was an eclectic mix of inquisitive gear heads, all keen to learn about the latest products and technologies from all three companies.

Hosted at Orlando, Fla.’s Orange Tree Golf Club, ACCRA Golf Day is actually the largest annual gathering of professional club fitters anywhere in the world. Organizers had to limit the invitations to 130 this year (leaving more than 40 folks on a waiting list hopeful of a spot) giving you a sense of how important this day is to the fitters who attend and why so many others are trying to get a foot in the door.

To a person on hand it is can’t-miss, which is why some folks are willing to go to extreme lengths to be in attendance.

One New York-based custom fit specialist, Jon Cannone of Spargo Golf, actually drove all day and night making it to Orange Tree just in time for the ACCRA Day kick-off after his Sunday flight out of LaGuardia Airport was cancelled due to a snowstorm. His effort received more than a standard golf clap.

Earlier today ACCRA co-founder Gawain Robertson pointed out in a phone conversation that at least one custom club-fitter was on hand for the event from every continent in the world — except Antarctica.

“And we’re working on that,” quipped Robertson.

What the assembled were especially intrigued to hear about this year was ACCRA’s official launch of the new TZ5 and TZ6, two premium shafts with distinct profiles that quickly garnered widespread attention with touring professionals late last year as prototypes.

Since that initial testing period both shafts have been put into play by several players, including Jason Day, Gary Woodland, Martin Kaymer, Ryan Palmer and Pat Perez.

Two other rather significant names, Cameron Champ and Tony Finau, recently started using one of the TZ models in their PING G410 drivers. Callaway Golf, which had its new Epic Flash driver on the range for testing, has a routine tour-targeted business alliance with ACCRA, even though the shaft company does not sell product to them directly, and it seems PING might try to strike a similar deal.

‘Played by the World’s Best, Fitted by the World’s Best’ continues to be a well-intentioned marketing slogan for ACCRA in recent years but this particular TZ launch feels like it has elevated the Canadian shaft company into a more prominent brand position alongside the game’s elite level performance shaft brands.

“It’s like 15 years to overnight success,” said Robertson, the former Canadian golf professional, who founded ACCRA along with partner Dave Makarucha, a former sales rep for Wilson, back in 2004. “We’ve always been well known, and well regarded, by custom fitters who continue to be our bread and butter as a company but the general golfing public really doesn’t know who we are because they’ve never seen ACCRA at retail. But our product has blown up with tour players and that in turn has been picked up on with GolfWRX, MyGolfSpy and social media. These last few months have been incredible.”

Generating a lot of the buzz surrounding this TZ launch is, in a word, “feel.”

Utilizing the best assets of its previous Tour Z shafts in conjunction with its proprietary in-house blueprinting capabilities, ACCRA brought in a different formulation of high modulus materials creating what the company says is, “smoother feel” in the TZ5, a shaft that continues to maintain the low spin, low launch characteristics of its predecessor.

The new TZ6 promotes more of a mid to higher launch that can control spin but still produce added power through its more active tip section. ACCRA calls the TZ6 a “spin-killing machine” thanks to its combination of 2.0 torque and powerful tip section but what’s critical here too is that continued focus on feel. The same high modulus materials being introduced in these new TZ models are also adding another level of stability. TZ6 by the way will be offered in four weight configurations (45, 55, 65 and 75 grams) with a matching hybrid shaft offering (85H) in multiple flexes.

“The launch of TZ5 and TZ6 the entire week of the (PGA Merchandise) Show was great,” said ACCRA marketing and sales manager, Ken Thompson. “We got tons and tons of exposure leading up to it and to be honest with you, since we got back from Florida, it’s exploded. It’s probably been the best single product release we’ve ever had.”

Thompson was quick to reaffirm that tour-validated influence.

“The PGA Tour has helped tremendously with this because we got a lot of play with the prototype. That by itself has been big and we’ve built off of that through social media play and a few other things and then by the time the PGA (Tour) came around we had a snowball going downhill. It went crazy from there and it’s still going crazy,” he said.

While it did not have a booth during this year’s show, ACCRA maintained a full appointment schedule over the industry gathering’s three days with each appointment buying into the TZ5 and TZ6 products.

The company continues to field a long list of inquiries.

“All our biggest accounts are fully on board. We’re also getting more and more guys on tour testing it all the time,” Thompson added. “We have two tour reps (Bill Constantine and Shawn Mullin) out there now instead of one so that helps a lot. Our brand is a lot more recognizable to those guys than it has been.”

Thanks to the early success of the TZ5 and TZ6 it seems that recognition for Canada’s ACCRA Golf is starting to trend among golfers everywhere.